Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

William Roerick, Stage Actor, 82

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

December 7, 1995, Page 00018 The New York Times Archives

William Roerick, an actor in theater, film and television, died last Thursday in a car accident in Monterey, Mass. He was 82.

Mr. Roerick's theatrical career began in the 1930's. He acted in a 1936 production of "Hamlet" starring Sir John Gielgud, Lillian Gish and Dame Judith Anderson, appeared with Katharine Cornell in "Romeo and Juliet" and toured in a production of "Dear Charles" with Tallulah Bankhead. He was also in the original company of "Our Town" (1938).

His many stage credits also included "The Magnificent Yankee" (1946), "Madam, Will You Walk?" (1953), "The Right Honorable Gentleman" (1965), "Marat/Sade" (1967) and "We Bombed in New Haven" (1968).

During World War II, he toured abroad with "This Is the Army," an Irving Berlin show that raised money for emergency relief.

For the past 15 years, he had played Henry Chamberlain in the CBS soap opera "The Guiding Light."

He is survived by a sister, Josephine Pursell, of Southbury, Conn.

A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on December 7, 1995, on Page B00018 of the National edition with the headline: William Roerick, Stage Actor, 82. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe